VOX – In early 2023, Marielle Williamson emailed her Los Angeles high school principal requesting permission to protest milk.
A senior and president of the school’s Animal Awareness Club, Williamson wanted to set up a table outside the school cafeteria to distribute literature about inhumane conditions on dairy farms and the pollution they spew — and promote alternatives, like soy milk.
It would be counterprogramming to the Got Milk? advertisements aired during the school’s morning announcements and plastered across the school’s hallways.
Williamson eventually got the green light from her principal, but with one confounding stipulation: She’d also have to promote the benefits of cow’s milk.
The school’s demand stemmed from a US Department of Agriculture (USDA) policy that states schools “must not directly or indirectly restrict the sale or marketing of fluid milk.”
Doing so would violate the rules of its participation in the National School Lunch Program, which all public — and many private — schools heavily rely on to subsidize their meals, and could result in fines and other corrective actions.
Marielle Williamson standing at the top of a small staircase, holding a tote bag that reads “For the Animals” in Spanish.
The policy “goes to show the stranglehold that the dairy industry has over LAUSD [Los Angeles Unified School District], over schools that participate in the National School Lunch Program,” Williamson told me.“My principal is a great guy, but it was the policy that he just had to follow.”
Rather than acquiesce, Williamson protested the policy. Working with the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), a plant-based nutrition advocacy group, she sued the USDA, the Los Angeles Unified School District, and her school’s administrators, arguing her right to free speech had been violated.
Months later, the school district settled the lawsuit, affirming students’ right to criticize dairy …
